Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum - October 2008

I have passed through Weston, WV before, but never stopped. This time I did.

I drove through town, and turned on to this street and there it was, the Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum, formerly Weston State Hospital. The facility was a psychiatric hospital operated from 1864 to 1994 by the government of the U.S. state of West Virginia, in the city of Weston.

So I pull up to park and notice I seem to be alone in visiting that day. Then begin to wonder just why that might be.

I eventually do make my way in, and was given a personal tour of the entire hospital and grounds by a former employee and resident, complete with gross, disturbing and hideously vivid anecdotes about daily life (and death) At Weston.

She was fabulously and gruesomely honest in her recollections -- it was perfect.